Shared Agency in Complex Settings

The paper begins by identifying two opposing approaches to (shared) agency — the standard model and the dynamical model. Despite differences between them, both models essentially converge upon the belief that shared agency entails direct mutual influence between agents, in the form of either mutual control or mutual responsiveness, respectively. This assumption becomes problematic when applied to interdisciplinary practices, like interdisciplinary research, which involve role specialization and thus do not lend themselves to an explanation in terms of direct mutual influence. In response to this difficulty, the paper advances a third approach — referred to here as the regulatory model (e.g., Schore, 2000)—which explains shared agency in terms of loose coupling (Gruber, Bödeker, 2005) understood as a pattern of cyclical organization of action in the course of which different positions (perspectives, agendas) are first differentiated during the exploratory phase and then integrated, giving rise to a dialogical from of self-organization.